by Sophocles
I’m too far gone to expect your help.
But whose strength can I count on, when acts
of blessing are considered blasphemy?
If the gods are happy I’m sentenced to die,
I hope one day I’ll discover
what divine law I have broken. 1020
But if my judges are at fault, I want them
to suffer the pain they inflict on me now.
LEADER
She’s still driven by raw gusts
raging through her mind.
KREON
I have no patience with such outbursts.
And none for men who drag their feet.
ANTIGONE
I think you mean my death is near.
KREON
It will be carried out. Don’t think otherwise.
ANTIGONE
I leave you, Thebes, city of my fathers.
I leave you, ancient gods. This very moment, 1030
I’m being led away. They cannot wait!
ANTIGONE pulls the veil off her face and shakes her hair free.
Look at me, princely citizens of Thebes:
I’m the last daughter of the kings who ruled you.
Look at what’s done to me, and by whom
it’s done, to punish me for keeping faith.
Kreon’s Men lead ANTIGONE offstage.
ELDERS
Like you, lovely Danaë
endured her loss
of heavenly sunlight
in a brass-bound cell—
a prison secret as a tomb. 1040
Night and day she was watched.
Like yours, my daughter,
her family was a great one.
The seed of Zeus, which fell
on her as golden rain,
she treasured in her womb.
Fate is strange and powerful.
Wealth cannot protect us,
nor can war, high city towers,
or storm-beaten black ships. 1050
Impounded too, was Lycurgos,
short-tempered son of Dryas,
King of Edonia: to pay
him back for insulting
defiance, Dionysos shut
him up in a rocky cell.
There his surging madness ebbed.
He learned too late how mad
he was to taunt this god
with derisive laughter. 1060
When he tried to suppress
Bakkhanalian torches
and women fired by their god,
he angered the Muses,
who love the oboe’s song.
By waters off the Black Rocks,
a current joins two seas—
the Bosphoros’ channel
follows the Thracian
shoreline of Salmydessos. 1070
Ares from his nearby city
saw this wild assault—
the savage wife of Phineus
attacking his two sons:
her stab-wounds darkened
their vengeance-craving eyes,
burst with a pointed shuttle
gripped in her blood-drenched hands.
Broken spirits, they howled
in their pain—these sons 1080
of a woman unhappy
in her marriage, this daughter
descended from the ancient
Erektheids. Nursed in caves
among her father’s storm winds,
this daughter of the gods,
this child of Boreas,
rode swift horses over the mountains—
yet Fate broke her brutally, my child.
Enter TIRESIAS and the Lad who guides him.
TIRESIAS
Theban lords, we walk here side by side, 1090
one pair of eyes looking out for us both.
Blind men must travel with somebody’s help.
KREON
What news do you bring, old man Tiresias?
TIRESIAS
I’ll tell you. Then you must trust this prophet.
KREON
I’ve never questioned the advice you’ve given.
TIRESIAS
And it helped you keep Thebes on a straight course?
KREON
I know your value. I learned it firsthand.
TIRESIAS
Take care.
You’re standing on the knife edge of fate.
KREON
What do you mean? That makes me shudder. 1100
TIRESIAS
You’ll comprehend when you hear the warnings
issued by my art. When I took my seat
at my accustomed post of augury,
birds from everywhere fluttering nearby,
I heard a strange sound coming from their midst.
They screeched with such mindless ferocity,
any meaning their song possessed was drowned out.
I knew the birds were tearing at each other
with lethal talons. The hovering beats
of thrashing wings could have meant nothing else. 1110
Alarmed, I lit a sacrificial fire,
but the god failed to keep his flames alive.
Then from charred thighbones came a rancid slime,
smoking and sputtering, oozing out
into the ashes. The gallbladder burst open.
Liquefying thighs slid free from the strips
of fat enfolding them.
But my attempt
at prophecy failed. The signs I had sought
never appeared—this I learned from my lad.
He’s my guide, as I am the guide for others. 1120
Kreon, your mind has sickened Thebes.
Our city’s altars, and our city’s braziers,
have been defiled, all of them, by dogs
and birds, with flesh torn from the wretched
corpse of Oedipus’ fallen son.
Because of this, the gods will not accept
our prayers or the offerings of burnt meat
that come from our hands. No bird now sings
a clear omen—their keen cries have been garbled
by the taste of a slain man’s thickened blood. 1130
Think about these facts, son.
All men go wrong.
But when a man blunders, he won’t be stripped
of his wits and his strength if he corrects
the error he’s committed and then ends
his stubborn ways. Stubbornness, you well know,
will bring on charges of stupidity.
Respect the dead. Don’t spear the fallen.
How much courage does it take
to kill a dead man?
Let me
help you. My counsel is sound and well meant. 1140
No advice is sweeter than that from a wise
source who has only your interests at heart.
KREON
Old man, like archers at target practice,
you all aim arrows at me. And now you
stoop to using prophecy against me.
For a long time I have been merchandise
sold far and wide by you omen-mongers.
Go, make your money, strike your deals, import
silver from Sardis, gold from India,
if it suits you. But you won’t hide that corpse 1150
under the earth! Never—even if Zeus’
own eagles fly scraps of flesh to his throne.
Defilement isn’t something I fear. It won’t
persuade me to order this burial.
I don’t accept that men can defile gods.
But even the cleverest of mortals,
venerable Tiresias, will be brought
down hard, if, hoping to turn a profit,
they clothe ugly ideas in handsome words.
TIRESIAS
Does any man grasp . . . does he realize . . . 1160
KREON
Realize . . . what? What point are you making?
TIRESIAS
. .
. that no possession is worth more than good sense?
KREON
Just as its absence is our worst disease.
TIRESIAS
But hasn’t that disease infected you?
KREON
I won’t trade insults with you, prophet.
TIRESIAS
You do when you call my prophecies false.
KREON
Your profession has always loved money.
TIRESIAS
And tyrants have a penchant for corruption.
KREON
You know you’re abusing a king in power?
TIRESIAS
You hold power because I helped you save Thebes. 1170
KREON
You’re a shrewd prophet. But you love to cause harm.
TIRESIAS
You’ll force me to say what’s clenched in my heart.
KREON
Say it. Unless you’ve been paid to say it.
TIRESIAS
I don’t think it will pay you to hear it.
KREON
Get one thing straight: my conscience can’t be bought.
TIRESIAS
Then tell your conscience this. You will not live
for many circuits of the chariot sun
before you trade a child born from your loins
for all the corpses whose deaths you have caused.
You have thrown children from the sunlight 1180
down to the shades of Hades, ruthlessly
housing a living person in a tomb,
while you detain here, among us, something
that belongs to the gods who live below
our world—the naked unwept corpse you’ve robbed
of the solemn grieving we owe our dead.
None of this should have been any concern
of yours—or of the Olympian gods—
but you have involved them in your outrage!
Therefore, avengers wait to ambush you— 1190
the Furies sent by Hades and its gods
will punish you for the crimes I have named.
Do you think someone hired me to tell you this?
It won’t be long before wailing breaks out
from the women and men in your own house.
And hatred against you will surge in all
the countries whose sons, in mangled pieces,
received their rites of burial
from dogs, wild beasts, or flapping birds
who have carried the stench of defilement 1200
to the homelands and the hearths of the dead.
Since you’ve provoked me, these are the arrows
I have shot in anger, like a bowman,
straight at your heart—arrows you cannot dodge,
and whose pain you will feel.
Lad, take me home—
let this man turn his anger on younger
people. That might teach him to hold his tongue,
and to think more wisely than he does now.
Exit TIRESIAS led by the Lad.
LEADER
This old man leaves stark prophecies behind.
Never once, while my hair has gone from black 1210
to white, has this prophet told Thebes a lie.
KREON
I’m well aware of that. It unnerves me.
Surrender would be devastating,
but if I stand firm, I could be destroyed.
LEADER
What you need is some very clear advice,
son of Menoikeus.
KREON
What must I do?
If you have such advice, give it to me.
LEADER
Free the girl from her underground prison.
Build a tomb for the corpse you have let rot.
KREON
That’s your advice? I should surrender? 1220
LEADER
Yes, King. Do it now. For the gods
act quickly to abort human folly.
KREON
I can hardly say this. But I’ll give up
convictions I hold passionately—
and do what you ask. We can’t fight
the raw power of destiny.
LEADER
Then go!
Yourself. Delegate this to no one.
KREON
I’ll go just as I am. Move out, men. Now!
All of you, bring axes and run toward
that rising ground. You can see it from here. 1230
Because I’m the one who has changed, I who
locked her away will go there to free her.
My heart is telling me we must obey
established law until the day we die.
Exit KREON and his Men toward open country.
ELDERS
God with myriad names—
lustrous child
of Kadmos’ daughter,
son of thundering Zeus—
you govern fabled Italy,
you preside at Eleusis, 1240
secluded Valley of Demeter
that welcomes all pilgrims.
O Bakkhos! Thebes
is your homeland,
mother city of maenads
on the quietly flowing
Ismenos, where the dragon’s
teeth were sown.
Now you stand on the ridges rising
up the twin peaks of Parnassos. 1250
There through the wavering
smoke-haze your torches flare.
There walk your devotees,
the nymphs of Korykia,
beside Kastalia’s fountains.
Thick-woven ivy on Nysa’s sloping hills,
grape-clusters ripe on verdant shorelines
propel you here, while voices
of more than human power
sing “Evohoi!”—your name divine— 1260
when the streets of Thebes
are your final destination.
By honoring Thebes
beyond all cities,
you honor your mother
whom the lightning killed.
Now a plague
ravages our city. Come home
on healing footsteps—down
the slopes of Parnassos, 1270
or over the howling channel.
Stars breathing their gentle fire
shine joy on you as they rise,
O master of nocturnal voices!
Take shape before our eyes, Bakkhos,
son of Zeus our king, let the Thyiads
come with you, let them climb
the mad heights of frenzy
as you, Iakkhos, the bountiful,
watch them 1280
dance through the night.
Enter MESSENGER.
MESSENGER
Neighbors, who live not far from the grand
old houses of Amphion and Kadmos,
you can’t trust anything in a person’s life—
praiseworthy or shameful—never to change.
Fate lifts up—and Fate cuts down—both the lucky
and the unlucky, day in and day out.
No prophet can tell us what happens next.
Kreon always seemed someone to envy,
to me at least. He saved from attack 1290
the homeland where we sons of Kadmos live.
This won him absolute power. He was
the brilliant father of patrician children.
Now it has all slipped away. For when things
that give pleasure and meaning to our lives
desert a man, he’s not a human being
anymore—he becomes a breathing corpse.
Amass wealth if you can, show off your house.
Display the panache of a great monarch.
But if joy disappears from your life, 1300
I wouldn’t give the shadow cast by smoke
for all you possess. Only happiness matters.
LEADER
Should our masters expect more grief? What’s happened?
MESSENGER
Death. And the killer is alive.
LEADER
Name the murderer. Name the dead. Tell us.
MESSENGER
Haimon is dead. The hand that killed him was his own . . .
LEADER
. . . father’s? Or do you mean he killed himself?
MESSENGER
He killed himself. Raging at his killer father.
LEADER
Tiresias, you spoke the truth.
MESSENGER
You know the facts. Now you must cope with them. 1310
Enter EURYDIKE.
LEADER
I see Eurydike, soon to be crushed,
approaching from inside the house.
She may have heard what’s happened to her son.
EURYDIKE
I heard all of you speaking as I came out—
on my way to offer prayers to Athena.
I happened to unlatch the gate,
to open it, when words of our disaster
carried to my ears. I fainted, terrified
and dumbstruck, in the arms of my servant.
Please tell me your news. Tell me all of it. 1320
I’m someone who has lived through misfortune.
MESSENGER
O my dear Queen, I will spare you nothing.
I’ll tell you truthfully what I’ve just seen.
Why should I say something to soothe you
that will later prove me a liar?
Straight talk is always best.
I traveled with your husband to the far
edge of the plain where Polyneikes’ corpse,
mangled by wild dogs, lay still uncared for.
We prayed for mercy to the Goddess 1330
of Roadways, and to Pluto, asking them
to restrain their anger. We washed his remains
with purified water. Using boughs stripped
from nearby bushes, we burned what was left,
then mounded a tomb from his native earth.
After that we turned toward the girl’s deadly
wedding cavern—with its bed of cold stone.
Still far off, we heard an enormous wail
coming from somewhere near the unhallowed
portico—so we turned back to tell Kreon. 1340
As the king arrived, these incoherent
despairing shouts echoed all around him.
First he groaned, then he yelled out in raw pain,
“Am I a prophet? Will my worst fears come true?
Am I walking down the bitterest street
of my life? That’s my son’s voice greeting me!
“Move quickly, men. Run through that narrow gap